The Land-War In Ireland (1870) eBook

One of the best pamphlets on the Irish Land Question
is by Mr. William M’Combie, of Aberdeen.
A practical farmer himself, his sagacity has penetrated
the vitals of the subject. His observations, while
travelling through the country last year, afford a
remarkable corroboration of the conclusions at which
I have arrived. Of the new method of ‘regenerating
Ireland,’ he says:—­

’In it the resources of the soil—­to
get the most possible out of it by the most summary
process—­is the great object; the people
are of little or no account, save as they can be made
use of to accomplish this object. But, indeed,
it is not alone by the promoters of the grand culture
that the people have been disregarded, but by Irish
landlords, generally, of both classes. By the
improving landlords—­who are generally recent
purchasers—­they are regarded merely as
labourers; by the leave-alone landlords as rent-producers.
The one class have ejected the occupiers, the other
have applied, harder and harder, the screw, until
the “good landlord”—­the landlord
almost worshipped in Ireland at this hour—­is
the landlord who neither evicts his tenants nor raises
their rents. The consequences are inevitable,
and, over a large portion of the island, they are patent
to every eye—­they obtrude themselves everywhere.
The people are poor; they are despondent, broken-spirited.
In the south of Ireland decay is written on every
town. In the poorer parts you may see every fifth
or sixth house tenantless, roofless, allowed from
year to year to moulder and moulder away, unremoved,
unrepaired.... To make room for these large-scale
operations, evictions must go on, and as the process
proceeds the numbers must be augmented of those who
are unfit to work for hire and unable to leave the
country. The poor must be made poorer; many now
self-supporting made dependent. Pauperism must
spread, and the burden of poor rates be vastly increased.
If the greatest good of the greatest number be the
fundamental principle of good government, this is
not the direction in which the state should seek to
accomplish the regeneration of Ireland. The development
of the resources of the land ought to be made compatible
with the improvement of the condition of the people.’

CHAPTER XXV.

CONCLUSION—­AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN.

The difficulty of understanding the case of Ireland
is proverbial. Its most enlightened friends in
England and Scotland are often charged with ‘gross
ignorance of the country.’ They might excuse
themselves by answering, that when they seek instruction
from Irishmen, one native instructor is sure to contradict
the other. Yet there must be some point of view
from which all sides of the Irish question can be seen,
some light in which the colours are not confused, the
picture is not exaggerated, the features are not distorted.